


Wouldn't Trade Ya

by TheMadChatter02 (TheMadChatter)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mostly Fluff, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMadChatter/pseuds/TheMadChatter02
Summary: Bitty's senior year is in full swing at Samwell when Jack gets some news - he's being traded.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fluffmodeous fluffy fluff fluff.
> 
> I'm in the middle of explosions and angst over in my (two) Supernatural wip(s! I'm the worst...) so when the Check Please update happened I got a plot bunny in my head, and, well...
> 
> ENJOY EVERYONE!!!!!

“Hey Honey, what's up? Shouldn't you be getting ready for the game?”  
  


“Eric? I...”

 

“Jack? Sweetheart, what's going on? Where are you? Are you okay?”  
  


“I'm- I'm in my car outside the rink. Eric...” Jack took a stuttering breath. “They traded me.”

 

Silence.

 

“Eric? Bitty, you still there?”

 

“Yes, yes, Jack, I... I'm here.” Bitty shook his head on the other end of the line. “There must have been some sort of mistake. Jack, you're _wonderful_. The Falcs were two games away from the Stanley Cup last year for the first time ever! They wouldn't. They couldn't!” He knew he was starting to sound a little hysterical and took a deep breath to calm down. “What happened?”

 

Jack sighed like he the weight of the world had fallen onto his shoulders. “It's the, those rumors about Kent and me and... uhh! Eric, j'ai capote, I hate it. He just keeps feeding the damn rumor mill and now there's too much speculation and I'm considered 'bad press' I guess...”

 

“That's not fair! You've never said anything but sportsmanlike things about... him. Or his team either. Not even when you get leading questions! I don't see how anyone-”

  
“It's the management, Bittle. The team doesn't care. I mean, you know they don't – they _love_ you. But management... I talked to George about coming out a couple weeks ago. Publicly. Like we talked about, tu te souviens?”

 

“Oh no, Baby...”

 

“She was really positive, remember? Well, she went to the higher-ups about a statement and... I guess...” Jack let out a breath in a giant whoosh of air. “According to George, the owner's gun shy about breaking this ground. Doesn't want to loose fans. Sponsors. Said there had been guys who played in the closet and didn't see why I needed to, quote, stir things up by coming out, unquote.” Eric didn't like the laugh that pulled out of his boyfriend. “He's been at it for almost two years! I'm tired of waiting for a good time. I'm tired of not being able to go out with you in public. I'm tired of carefully wording every single personal question I get in the press, or reminding Papa not to mention you, or the guys.... I just... I'm tired, Eric.”

 

Bitty gripped the phone with both hands, like he could transfer a hug over the line. “Oh, honey.” How he kept the tears out of his voice he'd never know. God, it was a good thing he'd been studying in his room for once. He was very nearly a mess, though Jack just sounded deflated – a positive alternative to the panic attack he could by all rights be descending into at the moment.

 

“Hey. It's okay. We'll figure something out. Where -” He sniffled as discreetly as possible. “Where are they sending you?”

 

Jack made a small amused noise. “The Miami Typhoons. Florida, of all places. Crisse... who plays hockey then goes to the beach? You Americans are crazy.”

 

“Muh... Miami? Wow, that's...”

 

“Yeah. Apparently the Typhoons don't care about the drama. I hear it's a good crew... They beat us in the playoffs last year. Apparently they jumped on the trade right away. It's a good deal, I guess... and this was always a possibility. I just thought if I was good enough, played hard enough, they wouldn't pull something like this. I wasn't good enough, I just wasn't worth the risk, I should have -”

 

Bitty took a deep breath and interrupted his boyfriend's blame-spiral. “When?”

 

Jack blinked and looked at his watch. Six forty-five on a Tuesday. It hadn't really processed yet. “Uh... wow. I have... I have to be on the lineup for a game on Friday. Wow. I guess it just... just sunk in... that's... Eric. _Eric_.” The car was suddenly too small, too confining. It was closing in on him. Everything was closing in. “I need to see you before I go. _I need to see you.”_ He could practically hear the floodgates of adrenaline open as his heart rate kicked up. “I have to pack, I have to _move_. It's so _far_. Eric... It's... it's so fast. God, I- I have to be there on _Friday_! I have a... we were going to help you look for grad schools and now... now... crisse. Bitty??”

 

“Shhh, Honey, it's okay. It's gonna be okay.” Bitty took a deep, calming breath and switched into optomistic-chaos-organizer mode. “Jack, honey? Are you listening to me?”

 

Jack took a moment, but seconds later Bitty heard a shaky breath over the line. “Oui.”

 

“Jack, honey, I need you to go to the gym and run 2 miles, okay? No more. Can you do that for me, Baby?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Bitty smiled so Jack could hear it in his voice. “All right. Then go home, take a shower. Get comfy and eat a slice of that peach pie I left for you that I know you haven't touched yet. I'm going to borrow Nursey's car and I'll be there in an hour as long as traffic isn't horrendous.”

 

Jack took another deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, mon cour. Merci. Thank you. I... I don't know how you do it.” He inhaled again and let it out slowly, closing his eyes and relaxing against the headrest of the driver's seat.

 

“Oh don't thank me, Baby. You've trained me well,” Bitty let out a small giggle. “Besides, you haven't had a real anxiety attack in, what, almost three years? I'm proud of you, Honey. And we'll get through this. I mean, it _will_ be okay,” he huffed a little and Jack let the familiar southern drawl lull him away from the precipice of a full on panic attack. “It'll be tough until Christmas. But I can maybe come to you for New Year's or you can come up to Georgia... we'll figure something out. And yes, spring semester will be rough, and you might miss graduation – but you might have missed it anyway, with the schedule as crazy as it is.” The idea of missing something so important as Eric's graduation tugged at Jack's heart. God, he loved him. He could hear his boyfriend rustling around his room, doubtless shoving a few things into a duffel bag for the impending drive to Providence. “I mean, Miami is hardly the worst place to be forced to visit, after all. And it's about the same distance as Rhode Island – don't be fooled, Florida is the _longest_ state. Do. Not. Drive it. Oh, Nursey! I'm nabbing your car, Providence Emergency.... well you should have thought about that before you made it the Haus Car for free rent, now shouldn't you have? Uh huh, that's right.... fine, red velvet when I get back. Sorry, baby...” Jack heard more rustling and some called goodbyes and catcalls from the others in the Haus as Eric obviously bustled out the door. He and Jack couldn't even be seen together alone in public, and this amazing young man was dropping everything for him at a moment's notice. Not for the first time, either, and through it all Eric Bittle had somehow chosen to stay with him for almost three years. Hell, Eric's biggest concern when Jack had told him he'd decided to talk to George about coming out publicly was that _he_ hadn't pressured Jack into it somehow. Everything crystallized for the older man in that moment. “But, of course, after graduation I'll be back in Georgia full time and I can always look for grad schools in Southern Florida.” Bitty continued rambling as Jack registered the sounds of a car door opening and closing in the background. “We can be close, maybe even live in the same building... or as roommates! That would be easy to explain – helping an old friend while he's at grad schoo-”

 

“Marry me, Bitty.”

 

Well that certainly derailed Eric's rambling.

 

“What?” Eric sounded so fragile for a moment, and Jack just wanted to wrap him up and keep him forever. Yeah... forever sounded good.

 

“Will you... Will you marry me?” Suddenly Jack's heart rate spiked for reasons completely unrelated to the trade. He had the fleeting thought as he pressed a hand against his racing heartbeat that he was lucky to get in so much cardio. “I... Crisse, Eric, I'll ask you again. In person. When you get here, I... D'esole, mon coeur... But I want you to know.” If Jack hadn't been able to hear the click of Nusey's crappy timing belt on the background he would have wondered if the call had dropped. “Eric?”

 

“Jack Zimmerman...” God, Jack could drown in the affection he heard when Eric said his name like that. Bitty sniffed and let out a small, delightedly hysterical laugh. “Yes.”

 

“Really?”

 

This startled a funny little snorting sound out of the small Georgia boy. “Of course, you ridiculous man...” Another warm, affectionate laugh washed over the line and it made Jack feel like he was dipping into a hot tub after a day in the snow. “You...” He inhaled sharply, like he'd just remembered something. “What about Miami?”

 

Jack was over the moon. “Miami didn't care about Kent, I can't imagine they'll care about this. You. Us. I... I'm going to call them on the way to the gym. We... Eric, are you sure?” The Canadian could almost hear his boyfriend's eyeroll through the phone. Fiance. His fiance's eyeroll. _His fiance_. Talk about going from a low to a high.

 

“Honey, of course I'm sure. What, you think you're not it for me? I swear, that boy...” Bitty's last words were muttered and slightly drowned out by the whistling of air through the leaky driver's side window of Nursey's car – a telltale sign he had finally started driving. The grin was still evident in his voice, however. “Jack, baby, you get yourself situated and head on home. Skip the gym. You're not gonna need it.”

 

“Oh, I won't? You sure? I should probably burn off some of this energy,” Jack chirped.

 

“Don't you worry, Mr. Zimmerman,” Bitty smirked, “you will.” A beat of intensely electric silence, and then they both laughed. Bitty composed himself first, joy practically leaking through the phone. “You get gone, sir. I'll see you in fifty minutes. We'll talk about... well, we'll figure everything out.”

 

Reality crashed back around Jack and he sobered immediately. “Okay, Bitty. I'll see you at the apartment. I...” He'd said the words a million times, but for some reason these got stuck on an emotional lump in his throat. “I love you.”

 

“I love you too, Honey. See you soon.”

 

 

 

In retrospect, Jack should have known a hockey team based in Miami would have less than no problem with a gay player on the team. (Gay, bi, he'd never really cared, but the headlines would definitely be 'first gay hockey pro.') It had been a surprisingly painless, short conversation. He'd called the team's manager, they'd conferenced in the PR lady, he'd informed them both that he and his fiance – who happened to he male – were looking forward to moving to Miami and being openly together there. He could practically hear the PR woman, Ruth maybe?, drooling over the potential publicly. They set up a meeting for two weeks from Thursday to discuss the process.

 

He also should have expected the whirlwind of happy tears and breath-stealing kisses he was attacked with when Bitty arrived about twenty minutes after he got off the phone. They fell into bed and talked and strategized and basked in one another's presence and did things Bitty referred to as “all kinds of nonsense” until they fell asleep wrapped up in one another.

 

And if Jack happened to wake Eric up the next morning with a breakfast of French Toast and coffee and a small gold band that had maybe been living in the safe for the last eight months and the look of Bitty, sleep-rumpled and happy and wearing his ring, enticed Jack back into bed until well past noon, well... that was nobody's business but theirs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
